


Countdown

by fallingangelx



Category: GOT7
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drama & Romance, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6838141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingangelx/pseuds/fallingangelx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What you do, where you go, and who you love—nearly everything is controlled by South Korea’s capital, Seoul. To retain order in society, a person is given three things the minute they are born:</p><p>1) a barcode, indicating that they are property of the government, stamped into their skin<br/>2) a tracking device, which has the ability to self-destruct at will, implanted into their body<br/>3) a countdown timer, which dictates the exact time they will meet their soulmate, imprinted in their left wrist</p><p>All Mark Tuan wanted was to escape—to be freed from a life of predictability and torment, and from the confines of the system he was forced to live under. There were hundreds of others like him. Thousands maybe. He just needed to find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fall

Mark’s head was spinning. And when your head is spinning, you're usually either developing a sort of odd forgetfulness toward memories in general, blanking out periodically, or straying completely from a conscious state of mind. Mark felt like he was experiencing a mix of all three, which might explain why he couldn’t recall what had happened earlier that night, why he was being chased by a troupe of strange men, or what exactly had led him to plummet headfirst from a twenty-seven story high rooftop and full speed toward the pavement below.

Forcing his eyes open against the suffocating wind from the drop, Mark pivoted his body so he could watch Seoul's expansive skyline as he fell, which was so bright and seemingly full of life but looked dead at the same time. He laughed as he wondered if this was what freedom, the one thing he had longed for so many years, felt like—the liberating feeling of having complete control over what he did and the sights he saw without having anyone telling him what to do and giving him shit over it. Falling did feel a lot like freedom. Falling. _Falling_. Mark’s eyes grew dry as he blinked twice with the realization that he did not, in fact, have control over his body at the moment. He swallowed back a yelp as his arms grasped aimlessly for something to make the falling stop, swinging both legs through the air and toward the closest building in view in hopes of regaining some footing to slow himself down. His right foot managed to scrape the surface of a nearby wall, propelling the boy so that his body fell perpendicular to the side of the tower. The smell of burning rubber filled his lungs as he pushed the sole of his left boot against the wall with all the strength he had left. He could feel himself slowing down the fall, heat from the friction beginning to reach the bottom of his feet. Spotting the ground mere meters before him, Mark wrapped his arms around his head, shut his eyes, and braced himself for impact.

 

-

 

Sunlight filtered through Mark’s eyelids, waking him. For the first few seconds, Mark was convinced that he was dead. He was convinced that he had crushed every bone in his body and died from that fall, and had somehow earned a spot in heaven despite all the fucked up things he had done during the past few weeks. When the putrid smell of something that had been burning for an awfully long time wafted past his face, Mark mechanically crinkled his nose in disgust and realized that he was, indeed, alive. He was alive, but where the hell _was_ he? He knew he hadn't been captured; he shifted his body and felt no trace of any methods of confinement, and listened to his surroundings only to hear an absence of voices. Mark found the silence a tiny bit concerning. He used the little energy he had left to slowly lift his eyelids open, preparing to take in the view of his current setting, which he already expected to be a peculiar one.

And peculiar it was. Mark opened his eyes to see a large, both tall and broad, boy seated at the edge of a coffee table next to the sofa he had been lying on, face leaning close as if he were studying his features. The boy broke into a wide, toothy grin as Mark shot him a look of panic.

“Guys!” The boy peeled his eyes off Mark and lifted his head to holler at the space behind him. “Come quick! He’s finally awake!” Large Boy’s gaze moved back to Mark before telling him in an excited voice to ‘stay exactly where you are and don’t move’ and removing himself from Mark’s sight.

Mark had always been something of a silent rebel, so he ignored the boy’s words and propped himself up on his elbows before promptly feeling a sharp pain in his lower abdomen and releasing a loud, agonizing yell. He glanced down to see his torso wrapped in layers of bandages and gauze, a spot on his side stained with dark red blood that had seemed to have dried overnight. Mark had shakily begun to reach for the injured spot before he heard a smooth, demanding voice come from behind.

“Don’t _._ Touch. It.”

A boy with jet black hair stepped over to him, swinging a large cooking cleaver over him and obstructing his curious hands from the bandages. _Jesus Christ_. Suddenly feeling threatened, Mark snapped his head up to get a better look at his captors, at least before he got finely chopped into bits. The boy at the other end of the cleaver had round catlike eyes, wide ears, and full lips which he pulled into an annoyed frown as he continued to stare death into Mark’s eyes. His second captor was slim with brown hair, and Mark could tell he was choking back his own laughter at the situation. Mark had always been especially good at noticing small details, such as the boy’s distinctively-shaped nostrils, the small mole under his left eye, and the way his eyes formed into crescents when he laughed. Large Boy was standing right behind Nostril Boy and Cleaver Boy, chubby-cheeked and towering over the two of them with a crop of strawberry-red hair atop his head and grinning even more brightly than he had when Mark had woken up.

Cleaver Boy pressed his lips into a tight line and set his cleaver on the floor, kneeling beside Mark to rest a gentle hand on his shoulder. Mark flinched at his touch.

“Do you remember anything at all from last night?”

Mark shook his head quickly, wincing once more at the sudden aching in his neck. He positioned himself so he could take a better look around the room. He noticed the room had walls painted in white and framed with tall window panes lined with clear glass, letting in rays of afternoon light pass through effortlessly. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in such a relaxing place. Fighting past his discomfort, Mark craned his neck to glance at what was behind him. There was a tiny kitchenette, its floor and splashback lined with antique tiles, next to a small dining table big enough to fit at most two people. Two pieces of what seemed like charcoaled pieces of toast rested on a single paper towel lain across the table, which had an odd arrangement of chairs seated around it—two framed with steel and the other made of a dark brown wood. It felt like a scene straight out of a modern-day Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and if it weren't for his injury Mark would already be halfway out the door by now. His eyes darted back to the three boys hovering around him when he startled from the sound of someone clearing their throat.

“You might not want to move too much. You fell pretty hard,” Cleaver Boy told him in a soft tone, gesturing at the wrapped up wound on Mark’s abdomen. “But don’t worry. Everything’s been taken care of.”

 _What does he mean by everything?_ And by everything, did he really mean _everything_? Aside from preventing him from bleeding to death, did _everything_ include getting rid of the group of guys chasing him and stopping the search parties that were tailing him for the past week? He needed some answers. Mark hated not knowing anything.

“What happened yesterday?” Mark finally managed to squeak out, his voice still scratchy from not having spoken once in the last forty hours.

Cleaver Boy was looking at his bandages, and spoke simply. “You fell. We saved you and brought you back here. Then we treated your injuries."

Mark gave in to his curiosity, fingers lightly skimming the blood-soaked gauze taped to his side. “Must’ve been a pretty bad fall,” he muttered, grimacing.

Cleaver Boy flashed a small, sheepish smile before pursing his lips and rubbing the nape of his own neck apprehensively. “Actually, the injury on your torso wasn’t from your fall.”

Concern abruptly washed over Mark’s face. “Then where did it come from?”

“We kind of had to…cut…...a chunk of your flesh off…” Large Boy interrupted hesitantly, his voice growing quieter with each word.

Mark’s eyes widened in panic as his hand shot down to cover the spot on his abdomen. He looked between the three wordlessly, mouth hanging open in sheer shock.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Cleaver Boy defended. “The government search parties were nearly about to catch you because you were stupid enough to leave your tracking device in.”

Right. The tracking device. Mark wasn’t an idiot. Of course he had had thoughts of removing it, and would have carried through with it in a heartbeat had he known beforehand where it was located inside his body. He knew all along that it was how the government was tracing him, but what could he do? It wasn’t like he could just slip off his skin and run off on his own goddamned body. Mark traced the area near his stomach where his tracking device had supposedly been located and sickened at the thought of how big a chunk these guys actually took from him.

Nostril Boy crossed his arms at Mark and huffed defiantly. “Hey, we just saved your life and this is the thanks we get!? Look, man. We could’ve just left you on the streets and let those guys have y—”

“Geez, Youngjae-hyung,” Large Boy cut in. “Be nice to him. He’s probably really freaked out right now.” Turning back to Cleaver Boy, Large Boy leaned his face closer to his, eyes twinkling with interest. “Hey. Leader, we should introduce ourselves. He’s been here for a while and he doesn’t even know our names yet.” Mark noticed that he said this while laughing, as if it were absolutely hilarious that Mark had woken up in a strange room full of strange people only to be threatened with a cleaver less than five minutes after he regained consciousness and be told that they had butchered off a piece of his body the night before. Yep. Hysterical, all right.

Rolling his eyes, Cleaver Boy pointed a finger over his shoulder at Nostril Boy. “Youngjae.” He yanked Large Boy forward, patting him audibly in the behind. “Yugyeom.” Cleaver Boy turned away from Mark and gestured with both hands at the two black letters imprinted on the back of his red bomber jacket. “That’s me.”

Mark squinted his eyes at the jacket. “J……R...” he read, his eyebrows furrowing in perplexity. “Wait a minute, isn’t that the same name as the guy from—”

Cleaver Boy flipped to face Mark quickly, pressing his fingers to his temples and flashing a sickeningly fake smile. “It’s pronounced _Junior_. Not 'Jay Ar'. Or 'Jrrrrr'. _Junior_. See, there is a dot. Right there after the R. Yes. Yep, that dot there. And notice how the R is lowercase? Yes, it’s a nickname. I’m named after the previous leader of our alliance because we both have the exact same name—first and last. _Not_ that after that guy JR from that crooked gang of Viperium hoodlums, all right, so don’t get us mixed up. Say it with me. _Junior_.” He didn’t move before, but now that Junior looked like he was about to go into hysterics, Mark scooted himself a few inches closer to the back of the sofa.

 “Don’t worry about him. He just isn't in his right mind at the moment, after everything that happened yesterday.” The tall boy nudged Junior aside before sitting on his heels and resting his chin on the edge of the couch. “So, what’s your name? I don’t think you ever told us.” After that, Yugyeom smiled. It was a comforting one—the first one Mark had received in a _long_ while and the kind that you just couldn't help but want to reciprocate. It was a good smile. A safe one. 

 

Finally breaking into his first genuine smile in weeks, he replied:

“I’m Mark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused, good. I am too. Things'll straighten out in chapter two. (ooohh damn that rhymed)


	2. The Big Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's a tad bit longer than the first chapter. Hopefully you get some clarification on what the hell's going on.

Mark had been standing in the shower for god knows how long, letting the weak stream of lukewarm water trickle from the showerhead and down his body. Junior had wrapped his lower abdomen with a long strip of plastic wrap before he let him into the shower, taping down the sides and slapping Mark’s hand away when he had tried to touch it. Mark tugged off a line of tape, facing away from the water and leaning down to get a better view of the damage. He crinkled his nose. Even masked by the scent of citrus body wash, the smell of day-old blood mixed with the medical gauze was gag-worthy. Sitting down on the cold tile of the shower, Mark’s face contorted at the unceasing pain tingling in every one of his limbs. He hadn’t fallen _that_ hard, Yugyeom told him, but with all the multiple dark-red bruises and flesh-deep scratches in his skin which stung when they were washed, he himself could see that he fell pretty damn hard. If it weren’t for the copious amounts of padding inside the Spinebreakers’ uniforms, which were there in case falls like this ever happened (and they happened a lot), Mark knew it could have ended way worse. He silently gave thanks to the boys who chased him off a building before he heard a loud voice calling from the other side of the bathroom door, yelling something about ‘turn off the goddamn water for god’s sake you’ve been in there for thirty minutes’ and pounding twice against the wood.

Sighing, Mark resumed his standing position, shut off the water, and stepped out. He made sure to keep his left wrist facing downwards as he dried it off, before slipping on the black wristband that normally concealed his countdown timer. Mark despised it—even more than he despised the very idea of soulmates. It dictated every aspect of who you would end up falling in love with, even counting down to the exact moment that you would meet them. The mere concept was laughable. Who was the city to decide who you’d end up loving for the rest of your life? What if you hated everything about your soulmate, and everything they stood for? What if they had broken out of jail fifteen times in the past year, or kidnapped preschool children or killed puppies for fun? What then? The power of love didn’t rule out all else, and to even _think_ that it did was absurd. Mark knew he could never hold the hands of a puppy murderer.

The last time Mark had looked at his timer, the numbers had been at 389:18:01:03, which meant that in 389 days, 18 hours, 1 minute and 3 seconds, Mark would meet his soulmate for the first time. Back then, he could have calculated the exact date and time that he would meet whoever it was, like most people who were absolutely smitten with the concept did, but he didn’t want to know. _Yet_ , that is. When he was still with the Spinebreakers a week ago, Mark had made a pact with two of the other guys in the group before they had left to form their own faction, Viperium. He hadn’t done much to confirm his compliance except nod, but it was still something he promised he wouldn’t back out of.

 

 

“Let’s kill our soulmates.” That was what Iron had suggested. With all the sleeveless shirts he would wear, Iron’s timer was almost always exposed, and Mark often took notice of the numbers dwindling down on his wrist. At their final meeting, with the three boys sitting in a circle on their bathroom floor, Mark saw that Iron would meet his soulmate in 23 days. It wasn’t a very long time away.

Mark stayed silent, awaiting the boy’s reasoning behind the ludicrous idea. Leaving his soulmate or simply never discovering who it was in the first place seemed like a reasonable enough proposal. But actually _killing_ them? Why go that far?

“Hear me out.” Iron began again, his voice barely a whisper. “Right now, we’re at the top of our game. We’ve accomplished so much and got nothing holding us back. Except this.” He gestured at his left wrist, pointing at the continually changing string of black numbers. “They’re our only weakness right now. They’re out there, somewhere in Seoul, still living their soulless, boring lives under that scheming shithole of a government. And when we meet ‘em—well, we kinda _have_ to meet them, we even got a countdown to the first meeting for god sakes—they’re gonna force us to change our ways and drag us back into the hellhole that we’ve been suffering in for so long. Then we’re gonna live the rest of our lives as fucking nobodies and die regular, boring deaths.”

JR—not Junior—cut in. “But what if we fall in love with them? They _are_ our soulmates, after all.” Mark nodded in agreement. No matter how much he hated the idea, there still could be the possibility of him turning into a blushing, blubbering mess around whoever his ‘destined someone’ was. Even if he fought with all his willpower, it was all out of his control. His soulmate was the one thing he was dangerously vulnerable to.

Iron lowered his chin at the younger boys, his lips contorting into an unsettling smirk. “That’s why we take ‘em out before we get a chance to.”

 

-

 

“Let me get this straight.” Junior started the interrogation calmly, pacing slowly back and forth in front of them with his hands neatly folded behind his back. It was two in the morning and the three other boys had been forced to listen to him speak—Yugyeom letting out silent yawns as he rested his head on the dining table, Youngjae perched attentively atop the stove elements, and Mark leaning back on the sofa, half-paying attention to Junior’s words and half-expecting the seat of Youngjae’s pants to spontaneously burst into flames. “Mark. You were a member of the Spinebreaker, correct?”

Mark didn’t know whether to nod or stay still. There was a high chance that they could be associated with the government and were recording the entire thing, so he continued to stare blankly at Junior.

Junior opened the broom closet and pulled out a grey moto jacket, trimmed with an excessive amount of studs and spikes. “You don’t have to hide it. I saw the emblem on the uniform you were wearing when you fell yesterday.”

“No way! You’re one of the Spinebreakers!?” Yugyeom lifted his head from the table enthusiastically, eyes shining with curiosity. “Do they treat you well? Are you friends with Jungkook? We actually get along pretty well, whenever he’s not trying to kill me, of course, but that’s another thin—”

Mark interrupted him mid-sentence by clearing his throat. “I’m not. Well…not anymore, at least.” His fingers moved distractedly in his lap, shifting to pick at the band aids covering his forearms. “I ran away.”

“So, you’re currently an Outsider, then?” Junior sat himself on the coffee table and across from Mark, tossing one leg over the other.

“I suppose,” Mark responded.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Youngjae said cheerily. “Do you know who we are? Or what we do?”

Mark shrugged in response, running a hand through his wet hair. He hadn’t really gotten much of any information from these guys besides their names. Was he _supposed_ to know who they were? Maybe they really did capture him and were holding him hostage and the Spinebreakers were standing right outside the room, waiting for the right time to burst in and beat the shit out of him.

Youngjae curiously raised an eyebrow. “Then, what about the main rebellion divisions? The Big Five? You _do_ know of them, right?”

Mark nodded, relieved that they finally asked a question he was somewhat able to answer. It wasn’t exactly an impressive skill though, since nearly everyone in Seoul who wasn’t living under a rock had at least _heard_ of the rebellion factions. Pyrachromic, Tigression, Viperium, Spinebreaker, and Serpentrine—it was one of the very first things he had to learn before getting accepted as a member of the Spinebreakers, back in the good old days when they weren’t trying to murder him. The rebellion divisions were comprised of members of society who decided to abandon their regular lives in Seoul in order to escape the constant control of the government. Joining a division wasn’t mandatory, of course. All Outsiders could choose where they went after separating themselves from society, but risked the chance of being a target of the rebellion if they decided to stay in the city. The best choice for an Outsider, or at least for Mark, was to join the faction in which you had the lowest chances of being killed in, which in Mark’s case was Spinebreaker.

Before JR and Iron had left to form their own faction and before he had run away, there had been ten boys in the group including Mark himself. Despite being older than most of the members, Mark was incessantly doted on after joining, particularly by JR and Iron, who had just recently become part of the group. The three often swapped life stories in their shared room once the other members had fallen asleep—Iron had been an Outsider for nearly a year, spending his time exploring the outskirts of Seoul and residing in nearby cities, while JR had originally been the leader of a smaller division prior to joining the Spinebreakers. Mark usually felt like the odd one out of the three, since nothing had really happened to him after becoming an Outsider, other than being relentlessly followed by the government and spending six days trying to locate the Spinebreakers’ hideout to request membership. The other seven boys were extremely friendly, almost to the point that it was suffocating to be in their presence for too long. Their leader, Rap Monster, had previously been an underground rapper in Seoul and despite being a year younger than Mark, radiated with such charisma and confidence that Mark never once questioned his leadership. Other than Jin, the group’s second-in-command, and their top combat strategist, Suga, the other boys—J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook—had loud and mischievous personalities which could easily be mistaken for those of kindergarten students. Mark shivered at the thought. Going into specifics about each one (especially the two youngest) would be an absolute nightmare. To put it as simply as possible, the Spinebreakers were the most fun-loving, relaxed, and rambunctious bunch of boys Mark had ever met in his lifetime.

Having been an official member of the Spinebreaker for two whole weeks didn’t make Mark an ‘expert’ on them, per se, but it did give him quite a bit of insight on what the group’s objectives were. Of the Big Five, they were the first rebellion group established and known among Outsiders for being the most easygoing faction, as long as you remained loyal to the group and agreed to help carry out missions. Their nightly missions normally involved retaliating against the advances of the Pyrachromic, planning for the liberation of Seoul and executing the aforementioned plans. Since joining the division, the execution part of the plans was something Mark had always remained apprehensive about. Their “liberation” plan was disgustingly twisted. Spinebreakers dedicated themselves to breaking into the homes of Seoul residents and forcibly removing the tracking devices from their bodies, and in mild cases, tattooing the faction insignia over their countdown timers to completely cover them. He had watched them do it tens of times, felt absolutely sick to his stomach at each instance, and never once went to sleep the same night with a clear conscience. It was supposedly a part the group had to play in the rebellion in attempt to free the people of Seoul from the corruption of the system, but Mark knew the acts carried out by the Spinebreakers were far worse than anything the government had dished out before. The Spinebreakers’ morals were definitely questionable and their ideologies were warped. Mark was aware of that. He had survived the grueling three-day initiation period and made it two-thirds of the way through the week-long post-initiation period before finally making his decision to leave the group.

_Mark’s Danger Ranking: 9/10. Will spare your life, but not the part of your body attached to your tracking device. Pretty nice guys if you get to know them personally. Avoid messing with._

 

As self-made enemies of the Spinebreakers, Pyrachromic was composed of four girls who were just as rowdy and liked to wreak havoc within the rebellion circles. Mark remembered that Suga had referred to them as the ‘queen bees’ of the rebellion groups, being highly recognized among citizens of Seoul and constantly buzzing with enthusiasm every time they managed to break into the Spinebreakers’ hideout. Mark and V were usually assigned to keep watch over the team base when the rest of the Spinebreakers were assigned missions in the West District and quite often failed at it, so he had seen them up close several times. Their uniforms consisted of monochrome varsity jackets with their insignia—a white flame—printed visibly across the back, which Mark guessed was derived from the name of their leader, Solar, along with their faction title. The other girls—Moonbyul, Wheein, and Hwasa—were petite and constantly wore sunny smiles, frequently breaking into wholesome laughter while looting their base, which Mark was incapable of understanding and made him feel even worse about his inability to properly defend the hideout. There was nothing funny about trashing another faction’s base, much less stealing their food. In the two weeks he had been one of the Spinebreakers, Mark couldn’t count the number of times the girls had ambushed his team or destroyed their provisions while they were out completing their assignments.

_Mark’s Danger Ranking: 7/10. Will not kill you, unless leaving you to die from starvation counts. Would prefer to avoid conflict with. Keep all supplies hidden._

 

Contrary to their faction name, the Tigression were a bit less terrifying than he had expected. But still pretty damn terrifying. Mark didn’t know any of their names or anything much about them, other than there were nine of them and the fact that they had the same objective as the Spinebreakers, which had driven both groups into a fierce and enduring rivalry. They were established later than most of the other factions, but rose in numbers—both in terms of members in the group and in fans from the capital—more quickly than any other rebellion group had since their initial formation. The band of nine girls were agile and evasive, interfering with his missions and occasionally leading government officers onto the Spinebreakers’ trail. Mark had some run-ins with a few of the girls in their fancy aqua motorcycle jackets on his first day, but never got to stay long enough to question who they were or what they were doing, only to receive a loud and angry scolding from J-Hope for ‘letting them get in the way of our business’. The Tigression girls were quite different from those of Pyrachromic, Mark had noticed, as the majority of them were taller, with murderous eyes and an aura of terror surrounding them. Since their last meeting, he hadn’t questioned the fact that they were infamous for being major threats to the city and the rest of the rebellion.

 _Mark’s Danger Ranking: 9/10. Scariest girls seen so far. Would not want to fight again. Ever. Do_ not _become rivals with them._

 

“I had some run-ins with Pyrachromic and Tigression before, so I’m pretty familiar with them. And I know enough about the Spinebreakers, obviously, since I used to be a member,” Mark finally replied as his gaze moved slowly from Youngjae to Yugyeom, finally settling on Junior. “But the guys never wanted to discuss the Serpentrine and I left soon after Viperium formed, so I can’t say much about those two.”

Only a week into its establishment, the Viperium were the most recently formed division. For all Mark knew, they were still ambiguous in numbers and even more ambiguous in terms of what they were trying to achieve. Mark had received and declined a direct invitation to become the second-in-command of the faction from Iron the same day he had proposed the pact of killing their soulmates. Mark squirmed in his spot on the couch. His vivid memory of the look in Iron’s eyes when he had suggested the idea was beyond unsettling. While JR was charismatic but kinder and gentler than his appearance implied, Iron was just as his name connoted—sharp, cold, and unforgiving. As the best fighters in the faction, skilled in both hand-to-hand combat and in using the Spinebreakers’ weapons, the two made up the ideal tag team for the group’s missions. With Iron’s aggressiveness and JR’s intellect, the two in action were deadly and merciless. After seeing what the duo was capable of through weeks of missions, Mark knew the last thing he needed was to get on their bad side.

Junior shot him a defeated look. “Well, you’re in luck. We ran into a few of them just the other day in the North District, and it seems like their numbers keep growing higher each day. I researched them a bit more and it appears that each of the members had previously been in other factions—even some from cities outside Seoul. It’s interesting, actually.” He said it calmly, as if the fact that their members were multiplying and he wasn’t sure how many of them there actually _were_ was totally okay.

 _Mark’s Danger Ranking: 8.5/10_. _Members aren’t complete noobs and they’re led by the two former aces of the Spinebreakers. Have the potential to be very dangerous._

 

“What about the Serpentrine? The guys I stayed with didn’t like talking about them,” Mark began hesitantly. They were the faction he really wanted to know about. The Spinebreakers’ attempts to change the topic whenever they came up had just heightened his curiosity even more. Other than knowing they were titled the ‘Dark Kings’ of the rebellion and as Jimin described, “scary as hell”, Mark hadn’t heard much about the Serpentrine from the late-night conversations the Spinebreakers usually had before they went to bed. It seemed almost as if the boys were purposely shying away from the subject—hurriedly switching the topic whenever someone had brought it up and shooting each other panicked glances when Mark had once mustered up enough courage to ask about it.

Yugyeom and Youngjae swapped wordless glances with one another, finally looking to Junior for an appropriate reply. Clearing his throat, Junior started quietly. “I get why they wouldn’t want to talk about them. Most factions in the rebellion don’t like to.”

Mark was growing agitated. Was it really that hard to answer the goddamn question? “Why not?”

“First off, they’re quite elusive and we haven’t had much experience in dealing with them,” Junior continued. “Yugyeom and I have never seen them in person. The only one that’s seen them up close so far is Youngjae.”

Turning to Youngjae, Mark questioned the boy impatiently, eyes gleaming with intrigue. “What are they like? How many of them are there?”

Youngjae seemed uncomfortable with the three pairs of eyes staring intently at him. “Well, there are three of them. Hence, the Serpen _trine_ —Junior told me that—and to say that they’re intimidating would be, well, an understatement. I was trying to keep an eye on some of the Tigression girls who were out on a mission and just…ran into them. There was a skinny one, a medium one, and a buff one. They were wearing these green snakeskin jackets with a cool silver insignia on the sleeve, and then one of them smirked at me and then the next thing I knew they were gone,” he rambled, his voice growing progressively louder and higher with each sentence. “Just…poof. Gone.”

“Camouflage technology,” Junior began thoughtfully, “is what my guess is. It gives them a further advantage—the element of surprise. No one’s able to see them coming. I’m not at all surprised, though. After all, they _did_ come from rich families,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And Youngjae, we went over this already; their names are BamBam, JB, and Jackson—not skinny one, medium one, and buff one.”

Groaning, Mark flopped his head against the couch pillows. “Can you guys finish up with the explanation, please? I still don’t get why everyone’s so afraid of them.”

“Getting impatient here, are we?” Junior scoffed, frowning. “Fine. You want to know why everyone fears them? I’ll get straight to the point then. They’re killers.”

Mark lifted his head. “What do you mean?”

Junior’s voice grew lower. “I mean, they kill people. Anyone and everyone associated with the Seoul government. I haven’t actually been there to see them do it, but I’ve done my research and heard rumours spreading through the factions about it. Apparently, they kidnap one person each night and threaten their life to force them to either convince the higher officials to eliminate the current system and surrender their power, or reveal the government’s secrets regarding the barcodes and the trackers and everything.” He sighed. “It’s never once worked though. Every member of the Seoul government has to make an oath to never disclose any inside information, or else they’ll receive capital punishment if they’re caught revealing anything. The government won’t move a muscle even when the Serpentrine has a grip on one of their highest officials, and the hostages just won’t crack even if their lives are at stake. Their devotion is amazing, really.”

Mark looked down at his lap. “That doesn’t sound _that_ bad.”

“The worst part comes after,” Junior warned, his expression darkening. “Once the Serpentrine realizes that they won’t give in, no matter what they try, they let them die. They don’t kill them. They _let them die_. They hold them captive and leave them inside a hideout or some sort, and let them perish there. Sometimes they actively torture them, and some times they don’t, depending on whether they’re in the mood or not. But whether they do or not, there’s no denying that they’re positively ruthless. That’s why no one has tried to stop them or even dares to talk about them out loud, because who knows, they could come swooping through the window after hearing you talk shit and put you through the same agony as their other hostages.”

Mark had thought what the Spinebreakers did was bad enough, but this—this was on a whole other level. At least the Spinebreakers were aiming to execute their city-wide liberation plan with no actual executions involved. These guys were capturing innocent, some maybe not-so-innocent, people and putting them through all this agony for something they had limited control over. It was sick and wrong. _Iron would be a good fit for the Serpentrine,_ Mark thought. After all, he had no qualms about killing his own soulmate—someone he had never once met before. But, then again, Mark had agreed to his pact as well, and wondered if it was possible to revoke his agreement. He had run from enough things this past month to earn himself ‘coward status’ in the rebellion and adding one more thing to the pile couldn’t hurt. It _did_ happen two weeks ago, which in the rebellion—especially if you went through as much as Mark did living with the Spinebreakers—felt almost like two years. Whoever his soulmate was, they didn’t deserve to die. Not at the hands of the person who they were supposedly predisposed to fall madly in love with, anyway. If there was anyone who deserved to die, it was the Serpentrine.

_Mark’s Danger Ranking: 10/10. Will absolutely not hesitate to kill you. Unpredictable, coldblooded, and dangerous. Stay away from at all costs. If you see them, run._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you guys tell which k-pop groups i based each faction on? Though, most of them are pretty obvious, haha.  
> And yes, I did name the guys Serpentrine after BamBam c;


	3. Black and Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark gets to find out a little more about his mysterious roommates. (cue the awesome uniforms dun dun duuun)

“Who the hell _are_ you people?”

Mark blurted his words out angrily at the breakfast table. Four days had passed since he had begun living with the three boys, and other than Junior’s little spiel to him about the Big Five and the Serpentrine the other day, he still knew absolutely zilch about the strange guys he had been residing with. During his stay, Mark had done nothing but drowsily mope around the boys’ tiny apartment and pass out on the couch every four hours, sleeping uninterrupted for three hours max before waking up utterly disoriented and in a terrible mood.

Out of the three, Mark found Yugyeom’s regular activities the most peculiar. Yugyeom would slip out of the apartment at exactly 9pm each night, leaving through the living room window so quickly that it foiled Mark’s multiple attempts to get a decent look at the insignia printed on the front of his maroon-red jacket, and return some time during the night once the others had fallen asleep. He would come and go every day like clockwork, almost to the point that it was scary; Mark would wake up at seven in the morning to see Yugyeom seated at the kitchen table, casually digging his spoon into his cereal and flipping through the same sports magazine that Mark would always find him reading. Mark had seen him donned in a full government officer uniform a few times before leaving the unit—decked out with the same gold-plated badge hanging from the chest pocket and a cap printed with the symbol of the Korean militia and trimmed with golden threads—which reaffirmed his previous hunches about the three being undercover agents sent by the Seoul government.

Spending more time in the apartment than Yugyeom but less than Junior, Youngjae made the most effort out of the three to converse with Mark on a daily basis, inquiring about his stay with the Spinebreakers and his old life in Seoul, taking care not to cross any lines and never hesitating to switch topics whenever Mark looked uncomfortable with answering. Most times, though, Youngjae simply relaxed on the couch and played video games on his laptop with Mark settled beside him and watching quietly over his shoulder, occasionally giving pointers on where to move and when to use the potions from his inventory. Youngjae had offered to let his silent supporter try his hand at it, but Mark always refused and insisted that he was fine with just observing, even times when he actually did want to play. Whenever Youngjae did leave the apartment, he would leave in the late afternoon and return before the sun had set (unless Yugyeom had decided to drag Youngjae along with him), and Mark deduced from this pattern that Youngjae had a fear of the dark. Lately, the younger boy would return a little before the clock struck seven, his arms full of either fresh bruises or paper bags filled with groceries. Considering the fact that there were no supermarkets within a thirty-minute driving distance from where they were, and the three boys didn’t even _own_ a car, Mark was still suspicious as to where these boys were getting their food from.

Junior rarely ever left the unit and acknowledged Mark even less—other than giving the occasional nod when he passed Mark in the hall and smiling after dinner whenever Mark thanked him for his cooking—spending all his time either holed up in his own room or typing away at his laptop on the kitchen table. Nicknamed the “team mom” of the group by Yugyeom and Youngjae, the quality of Junior’s cooking was nothing to laugh at. Youngjae was in charge of getting and delivering the groceries while Junior would miraculously whip them into meals, no matter what Youngjae had ended up bringing home. But what Mark was most impressed with was Junior’s peeling skills—the way he’d keep the paring knife still and twist the peel off an apple in one swift movement, all while keeping his eyes glued on the pages of his book. That _Cleaver Boy_ nickname Mark had christened him with when they first met wasn’t exactly unfitting, and it held up, even now. His knife skills were definitely no joke either, as could be seen whenever the boy was preparing vegetables for dinner, and Mark gulped at the thought of getting on Junior’s bad side each time he saw him holding one.

If he wasn’t on Junior’s bad side before, Mark certainly was now. Junior stood gaping at Mark before the batter-stained kitchenette, wide-eyed at the words that just had the audacity to leave the boy’s mouth—which, for the record, had been munching away at the pancakes that _he_ had made for the last six minutes. Mark silently thanked the gods that Junior hadn’t been holding his cleaver right at that moment.

“Hyung. I think we were so caught up in everything that we forgot to tell him who we are this whole time.” Yugyeom stepped away from the table to cup his hand over Junior’s ear as he whispered his words in a sheepish but cautious tone. According to what Mark had observed during his stay, Junior would go into freak-out mode sometime soon, and the other two were well aware of that.

Their leader dragged his gaze slowly from Yugyeom to Mark, and then back to Yugyeom. “Then _you_ tell him,” Junior snapped wearily, setting his metal spatula down on a plate of pancakes beside him with a loud _thunk_ that made Mark flinch. _Yep. There it is._ “It’s not like you can’t talk. Why do I always have to be the one to explain everything?”

Yugyeom unhesitatingly dropped his fork onto his plate along with a slice of pancake, and rested his cheeks in the heels of his palms before spinning in his seat to face Mark. The youngest boy didn’t waste any time waiting for Mark to finish chewing before he fell into one of his usual digressive explanations. “We’re a pretty misunderstood group. First off, the government loops us into the same category as the rebellion groups simply because we don’t live in their society anymore. I like to think of us as a non-assimilating group of Outsiders, who just so happens to be the only neutral force that is actually drawing a line and keeping balance between the two parties. We’re basically just like sp—”

“To put it simply, we’re the sixth most important faction after the Big Five.” Junior cut in abruptly, turning back to the loud sizzling of the pancake batter against his skillet. “We’re the Arachniad.”

Intrigued, Mark raised an eyebrow. “What kind of a name is that?”

“They’re often misunderstood, but spiders are actually one of the world’s most useful insects,” Yugyeom started again matter-of-factly, while Junior mumbled a quiet ‘ _Jesus Christ, Yugyeom, how many times do I have to tell you that spiders aren’t insects’_ which the youngest ignored _,_ “since they lure other nasty, annoying bugs into their traps and end up pretty much as a form of natural pest control to humans. Alignment-wise, I’d say we’re the ‘Chaotic Good’ of the rebellion. See, we try our best to keep the rebellion in order—making sure that they don’t cross the line between liberating and hurting people, keeping tabs on where faction members are and what they’re doing, and generally protecting Seoul citizens from any harm. We also draw government forces that are sent to these outskirts back to the main city and away from the hideouts of the rebellion groups so they don’t end up punishing the innocent factions.”

Junior shut off the burner and pursed his lips. “Well, we’re called the Arachniad because we were originally a triad—a small group with just the three of us in it. Since Mark is here now, well, we can’t exactly call ourselves a triad anymore, but we could easily just call ourselves a tetrad and not have to change our faction name,” he rambled thoughtfully as he transferred the last pancake onto his plate in one swift movement, and Mark noticed his eyes were downcast. “Actually, scratch that. We shouldn’t consider changing our name if we aren’t even _certain_ that he wants to stay with us at all.”

“Hey, even if he doesn’t, we could always try enticing him to stay,” Youngjae fired back at their leader before flashing a wide smile at Mark. “Wanna see our uniforms? They’re really awesome, man,” he continued to chatter as he raced to his room and back, returning with one of the maroon-red jackets Mark had been so curious about draped over his arm. He slung it on the back of his chair, placing his hands on his hips and proudly watching as Mark examined the fabric. “Pretty neat, huh? Jinyoung-hyung helped me design them.”

Setting his plate of pancakes onto the edge of the table, Junior pulled up his chair and joined the rest of the boys in conversation. “Our uniforms _are_ pretty sweet, if I do say so myself,” he mumbled between bites, pulling the jacket from Youngjae’s chair. He put a hand into the sleeve and grinned when he saw Mark gaping in amazement as the material changed from red to jet black. “We can change their colour based on what we’re trying to accomplish—bright red if we’re trying to distract and lure away government forces, and black, which we typically wear, when we’re sneaking around at night trying to keep the other factions from creating too much mischief. The technology’s no where near as advanced as the uniforms worn by the Serpentrine, but hopefully, if I ever get a chance to get a sample or see the material up close, I can be able to duplicate the properties of their jackets so our group will be able to fully camouflage when completing our nightly rounds.” Junior tossed the jacket across the table at Mark. “You can try it on, if you want.”

Nodding absentmindedly, Mark slipped his arms through the sleeves and flipped on the hood. Anything with a hood attached to it was alright in his books. The jacket being red was just a bonus. The colour-change switch was located inside the rim of the left sleeve, Junior added, as the newcomer’s eyes remained focused on the intricate spider insignia stitched into the chest pocket. Mark’s face lit up as he began pressing the button repeatedly and watching the material of the jacket rapidly flash between red and black. He’d always dreamed of dressing up as Spiderman for Halloween when he was in middle school, and right now, this was the second closest thing to it.

But something just didn’t sit right with him. First off, the group was small in numbers, and secondly, they weren’t exactly renowned within the rebellion for their high-tech artillery like the Serpentrine were. Why were they going against their own forces and saving Seoul citizens, who had no appreciation for what they did and who were basically mindless drones controlled by the government?

“But Seoul citizens have the police. They don’t need any more protecting.” Mark ran his fingers through his hair again and his gaze slowly shifted to look each of the boys in the eye. With great power comes great responsibility—Mark knew that. He often quoted Spiderman in his thoughts. But it wasn’t their responsibility anymore. So why were these guys doing this? They had made a choice. They’d left the city to pursue a life of freedom from these societal constraints. They had already escaped, so it wasn’t their problem anymore. It wasn’t their war to fight. He lowered his voice. “What, are you guys are trying to be heroes or something?”

Junior slipped him a half smile. “Considering the states of the city and the rebellion right now, someone has to be.”

 

 -

 

Mark had woken that evening, limbs splayed across the couch, to see Junior sitting quietly at the kitchen table—welding goggles off and pushed up onto his forehead and his eyes downcast in concentration. It was only six o’clock, but the curtains were drawn and other than the blue light coming from the plasma torch Junior was using, the room was pitch black.

Junior lifted his head slightly towards Mark’s direction in acknowledgement, but kept his eyes glued on his work. “Finally decided to wake up, huh,” he mumbled monotonously, putting his tools down to adjust his gloves. “Funny though, how your naps always seem to last seven hours long. I could always use some help making dinner, you know.”

“Sorry,” Mark grumbled in response, slumping his way into the kitchen. “What are you working on?”

“If you’d been awake at normal hours for the past two days, you’d know.” Junior tugged his goggles down to cover his eyes and shoved aside the mess in front of him to gesture at the pair of steel-plated glasses sitting at the center of his workspace. “They’re un-invisibilizing glasses. I tried to make them so we could detect the camouflaging technology the members of the Serpentrine wear during their nightly attacks. They’re the one rebellion group that I don’t have solid information about, other than the rumours spread by the other factions. We’ve been planning to head out tomorrow night, find them, and use these to scan their barcodes to get a more accurate reading on who those guys actually are. Hopefully after that, we’ll have identified their weaknesses, be able to predict their location, then catch them easily and stop them from causing too much damage in Seoul.”

Mark nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan,” he finally murmured, leaning down to catch a closer look at the glasses. “How do you know if they work?”

Junior sighed, pushing his goggles back up. “I don’t. That’s the problem. So that’s why we all decided we’re heading out tomorrow to see if these things actually fulfill their intended purpose.”

“What are you guys up to? Has Youngjae-hyung come back with groceries yet?” Yugyeom’s head popped in from the hallway, his cheery voice muffled by the black mask covering the bottom half of his face. He was dressed in the same red jacket Youngjae had shown them that morning, evidently just about to leave for his assignment. Pulling off his mask, the younger boy shuffled over to where the other two were sitting, propping himself up against the table’s ledge and snatching the pair of glasses from Junior’s workstation before their leader could argue with him. “Oh, you’re finally finished them all? Feels like you were taking forever.”

“Not like _you_ helped me at all.” Junior pulled off his mechanic’s gloves in a huff, tossing them at the younger in annoyance and seizing the glasses back without another word. It was in that moment that Mark spotted an alarming abundance of zeroes lining Junior’s wrist, unhesitatingly moving his seat in to get a better look at the boy’s countdown timer. Mark’s eyes widened with awe as he glanced at the perpetually changing arrangement of numbers to see 00:27:06:51 printed along Junior’s skin. He’d never seen a countdown timer this close to ending in his life.

Mark spoke without thinking. “You’re meeting your soulmate tomorrow.”

Junior flashed his first genuine, eye-crinkling smile Mark had seen in days, letting a small chuckle escape his lips. “Yeah. I am.” He rested his cheeks, which were now flushed with a bright shade of red, in the palms of his hands in complete excitement.

Yugyeom grinned at them, pulling back his sleeve and nudging Mark in the shoulder with his exposed left wrist. “I’m meeting mine tomorrow, too, Mark-hyung.” His wrist read 00:26:59:04. “I’m lucky, huh. I get to meet mine before Junior-hyung meets his,” Yugyeom finished cockily, puffing up his chest.

“I’m pretty excited to meet her actually.” Junior was staring dazedly at the pair of glasses in his hands, his voice growing lighter with each word. “I wonder what she’s like.”

Yugyeom suppressed a snicker. “What if she’s one of the Tigression girls?”

 _What if they’re not a girl at all,_ Mark wanted to comment, muffling his amusement with his hand. After all, the countdown timers never told you specifically the gender of your soulmate, or anything about them except for the time that you’d meet them. Two of his high school friends who he’d known to be straight ended up with soulmates of the same gender. It was a game of chance, really. You never fully knew what you were going to get until you met them. Even Mark himself didn’t know. Not that he gave two shits about meeting his soulmate, anyway.

Junior grimaced. “I highly doubt it. I’ve run into most of the rebellion girls already and it’s still ticking. Besides, why would I get paired up with some lowlife from a faction that hurts people for fun? It just doesn’t make sense.” He paused to wave a finger in Yugyeom’s face. “If anything, it would be some greenhorn Outsider we run into while we test out these glasses. Some city girl from Seoul who can join our group and go on missions together with us. That’s probably who I'll meet.” Junior sighed dreamily. “I can just imagine how cute she’ll be.”

Yugyeom frowned, his lips curving almost into a pout before propping his arms up on the table. “My soulmate is gonna be way cuter than your soulmate,” he taunted, shooting a competitive glance at Junior.

“Tomorrow.”

The two boys stopped bickering and turned towards the source of the interruption.

“Can I go with you guys tomorrow?” Mark asked a bit shyly, tracing a finger along the rim of the glasses. It had been a while since Mark had last gone on a rebel mission, and even longer since he had last attempted to do something that didn’t involve terrorizing innocent citizens with the Spinebreakers. He felt like he had to do _something_ to redeem himself from all the fucked up stuff they made him partake in, even if it was just testing out a pair of glasses made by some rookie engineer whose only motivation to leave the house was to meet his soulmate.

“I made a fourth,” Junior said calmly, a smile sneaking to the corners of his mouth. “Just in case you decided to join us.”

 

 -

 

Just before sunrise, Mark woke on the couch, his mind still crawling with thoughts of their conversation earlier about the boys finally being able to meet their soulmates the next day. He had commanded himself tens of times to be glad for them. In a little more than a day, they would meet the person they had been destined to end up with ever since they were born. Seeing Junior and Yugyeom acting all lovey-dovey with their soulmates inside the apartment wouldn’t kill him, but Mark couldn’t promise that he wasn’t going to gag at it every so often. It was a pretty big deal and they were evidently more than happy about it, so he was too. Wasn’t he?

Flicking at his wristband with his fingers, his eyes were unwaveringly fixed on the dark material covering his left wrist just as they did each time he had just woken up from sleep. It was tempting. He could take it off and end his curiosity any time he wanted. Mark slipped his thumb under the band, lifting its bottom edge before prying his eyes away from his wrist, sighing dejectedly, and sliding his left arm under his quilted comforter. It was tempting to the point that it was almost _agonizing_ , but he knew he had enough self-control to contain himself.

He closed his eyes and lay in silence, listening to the sound of magpies squawking outside his window. As much as he hated himself for thinking about it, he’d wonder from time to time whether the countdown on his wrist had already ended. Whether he had already met his person. And who that person was. In the moment just before he fell back asleep, Mark swore he could feel the numbers on his timer still ticking away against his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spiderman, anyone? (;  
> Chapter Four's gonna be allllll about the Serpentrine crew and their shenanigans.  
> I know it might seem a little slow at the moment, but get ready, cause the next few chapters are gonna be where the REAL action starts!!!


	4. 9:08:21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackson gets emotional, BamBam gets naked, and JB regrets becoming their leader. Yenno, the usual.

Even though it was only an hour past dawn, Jackson had been staring out longingly at the Seoul skyline for over twenty minutes now. He’d seen it countless times at night when he and the other faction members were out during their missions—the strips of newly-built condominiums lined with rows of dimly lit windows, the bridges and highways dotted with endless streams of car headlights, and the busiest streets outlined with the vivid colours of flashing billboards. He had only ever seen the city when it was fully awake. Jackson had gazed at the same view a thousand times and needless to say, as most people did from overexposure, he had grown tired of it. The Seoul skyline in the morning, however, had something weirdly awe-inspiring to it—with the way the pink rays of sunlight bounced off the reflective rooftops, the way the sidewalks were missing its usual bustle of citizens, and the way the city radiated an aura of stale warmness left over from the sunrise. Jackson and the others usually slept late into the afternoon after returning back from their missions at ungodly hours, but for once, he wanted to see what Seoul looked like when it was asleep. While the city at nighttime had adrenaline pumping through his veins, seeing a cloudless, starless sky hanging above Seoul was rather comforting. 5am was the only time the city felt so utterly honest, vulnerable even, to the point that it nearly made Jackson forget about everything else that was going on around him.

His teammates had always seen Jackson as a bundle of endless energy. He was their personal cheerleader—the one who pushed the boys out of their comfort zones and kept them motivated, reminding them to never give up whenever times got tough—and he was determined to keep it that way. The only time he felt he could escape from himself was when he stood on the balcony of their penthouse as he usually did at daybreak, staring out at the breathtaking view and breathing in the crisp morning air with a cup of freshly-brewed green tea in his hands. For the past couple of days, Jackson had been having trouble sleeping, feeling sudden spells of exhaustion throughout the day and being kept awake whenever he’d tried to fall asleep. It was definitely strange. Usually, he was already out by the time his head hit the pillow. Folding his fingers around his tea mug and resting his forearms against the terrace rails, he glanced down at his countdown timer.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” Jackson scolded animatedly, jabbing a finger at it. “It’s your fault I have a messed up sleep pattern now, isn’t it?” A warm smile spread across his face as he leaned closer to his left wrist so it could hear him properly.  “Don’t worry. I’ll be seeing you soon, so make sure you get some rest, alright?”

The sound of turning magazine pages behind him made Jackson jump. “You’re talking to your soulmate again?” JB was leaning back in his black leather armchair with a pair of dark sunglasses on and his usual look of indifference plastered on his face. “You know that they can’t hear you, right?”

“Of course they can,” Jackson fired back indignantly. “I feel what they feel and they feel what I feel. So of course they can hear me. Our hearts are connected.”

“If you say so,” JB said monotonously, flipping another page before picking up his laptop from the coffee table beside him. “By the way, I have some updated information on the Viperium. Apparently they just got new recruits from Python X—Shownu, the faction’s leader, and some other guys called I.M and Jooheon.”

“No way!” Jackson gasped excitedly, any traces of fatigue leaving his face as he bounded towards their leader. “Jooheonie!? Damn, I haven’t seen that guy in _ages_! We used to hang out all the time before I became an Outsider, you know. I wonder if Namjoonie’s doing okay, too. He’s still with the Spinebreakers, isn’t he?”

He couldn’t see JB’s eyes very well through his sunglasses, but Jackson was pretty sure he had just rolled them. “Those guys aren’t in our faction, so stop worrying about them. Focus on your own team, will you? We have a really important mission tonight, so all three of us need to be prepared.”

“So, who are we targeting tonight?” Jackson leaned against the armrest of JB’s chair to get a closer look at the screen.

“This guy. Kim Shidae,” JB said as he loaded a picture on his laptop of a middle-aged man wearing a bright, sunny smile. “He’s part of the legislative branch in the National Assembly. He was elected not too long ago, so we might be able to break him and get the information we need.”

“Aw, but JB, what if he has a family?” Jackson protested, pointing at the screen. “He looks like he’d be a great dad.”

JB tapped his fingers on the keyboard, ignoring the younger. “Found out where he lives. I did an outer scan on the house and it doesn’t seem that secure. If we move fast, we can leave at 8:40 and be out of there by 9.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jackson mumbled drowsily, rubbing his eyes. “Just in time to meet our soulmates. I just hope my hair doesn’t get too mussed up after we come back after the mission. That would suck big time.”

Shutting off his laptop, JB slid it under his armchair. “You’re worrying about it too much. Worry about Kim Shidae first.”

Jackson let out a loud yawn, stepping away to shut the doors to the balcony. “Yeah. Tired again. I’m heading back to bed.”

JB let out a muffled laugh. “Didn’t you just wake up an hour ago?”

“Blame this asshole,” Jackson whined, pointing a finger at his countdown timer before setting his mug gently onto the granite counter. “G’night.”

“You might wanna wait a bit.” Their leader let out an uneasy cough. “BamBam’s still…” JB formed a circle with his forefinger and thumb on one hand and moved another finger through and out, gesturing suggestively. “Busy right now.”

Approaching the closed door to BamBam’s bedroom, Jackson pressed an ear to the wood, cursing whoever designed the floorplan for their penthouse. His bedroom was connected to the younger boy’s through a door beside his bed, so getting back to his own room was practically a journey each time, especially after BamBam turned eighteen a year ago.

Jackson had considered swapping rooms with BamBam before, and requested a temporary room switch. But, after a week of actually testing it out, Jackson had decided he’d much rather walk into a heated fuck session between two guys than have BamBam stumbling into his room half-naked, making out with some stranger and failing to keep it in his pants before he could reach his own bedroom. So, Jackson carried out the usual protocol whenever he needed to get to his room and knew BamBam was fucking someone—closing his eyes, pressing his forehead against the door, and letting out an impatient and elongated _‘Baaaammm’_ after knocking twice. He heard a muffled ‘oh shit’ from the other side from some voice he vaguely recognized, the bedsprings giving one last squeak, and the sudden sound of bare feet pattering against the tile and towards the door.

With a click of the door handle, a skinny, half-dressed boy donning an neon red almost-bowl-cut pushed past Jackson and scurried quickly into the hall, clutching a t-shirt and boxers in one hand. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” the boy anxiously repeated in a voice too deep to match his appearance, scrambling for the doorknob of the main entrance and slipping out of the apartment with a loud slam of the door.

“Him again?” Jackson teased, running his fingers through his front bangs as he stepped cautiously into BamBam’s room. The first thing he noticed was that used condoms were scattered all over the bedroom floor, and Jackson had to will himself to tiptoe around them. It was as if he was about to trudge through a tiled field of land mines, and god forbid Jackson step on one. The second things to catch his eye were the condom wrappers shamelessly piled up on the bedside table and freshly formed imprints of sweaty butt cheeks on BamBam’s dark grey duvet covers, which were tossed to the foot of his king-sized bed. Thirdly, Jackson could spot a butt-naked BamBam sitting nonchalantly at the head of the bed, his sex-spawned flush slowly draining from his face, and crossing one leg over the other while he scrolled through pictures on his phone.

Jackson flopped himself onto the chair in the corner of the room, looping his feet around the legs and wrapping his arms around the wooden backrest. “JB told you before not to mess around with the guys from Spinebreaker. Everyone knows they’re gigantic blabbermouths. Seriously, if you keep this up it’s gonna ruin our menacing image, and I’m not ready to lose my title of ‘coolest guy in the Big Five’ to _anyone_ , okay?” Glancing down, Jackson crinkled his nose. “And Bam, can you cover up? No one wants to see your floppy-ass dick.”

BamBam pulled a t-shirt over his crotch, his gaze switching from his phone to Jackson for just a second, then settling back onto his device as he grinned mischievously. “Morning, Jackson-hyung.” He seemed distracted when he spoke. “You should probably leave soon. I’m meeting someone else at five-thirty.”

Crossing his arms, Jackson lay his chin on the backrest of the chair. “I don’t get how such a sweet, innocent kid turned out like this. You’re meeting your soulmate tonight, remember? Right before I meet mine. You can’t just go sleeping around with other guys after meeting your soulmate, you know.”

“I know that,” BamBam grumbled. “That’s why I’m sleeping with them _now,_ before I get tied down to one person for the rest of my life.” He said that as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. BamBam reached his arm out and held his phone high above his head, posing cutely before snapping a quick picture. “Why don’t you just worry about your own soulmate? I don’t get why you’re so obsessed about a person you haven’t even met yet.”

His eyes darted from the younger boy to the floor, and Jackson felt a slight twinge of guilt prick him briefly in the chest. For once, BamBam was right. Jackson was so completely and utterly fixated with his soulmate that it was almost embarrassing to admit out loud, and it had been that way for as long as he could remember. As soon as he learned how many days were in a year, and how to count numbers and tell time and all that jazz, Jackson had calculated exactly when he’d meet his soulmate—down to the very last second. March 17th, 9:08:21pm during his twenty-first year. Eight minutes and twenty-one seconds after the clock struck nine on March 17th, two weeks before his twenty-second birthday, Jackson would be looking into the eyes of the person he’d longed to be with since his mother had explained to him the concept of soulmates when he turned four. Even though he hadn’t officially met his soulmate yet, Jackson had already fallen in love with them years ago before he had even known what love was. When he wasn’t out on missions, working out, drinking organic tea or chatting with his housemates, Jackson spent his time daydreaming about his destined someone—the person who was meant for him, and who he was meant for. The person who was entirely perfect for him and who would love him irrevocably.

Jackson had never been as much of a dreamer as he was a doer. But no matter how impatient he was or how many times he attempted to make the numbers on his wrist change faster, meeting his soulmate wasn’t something he had control over. He couldn’t do much of _anything_ , really. For now, all Jackson could do was wait patiently until the time he’d finally see them arrived. What was most admirable about it was the fact that Jackson didn’t need to promise himself to keep his heart faithful. The devotion was practically ingrained in him, and in all his years, Jackson had never spared a second glance at any of his schoolmates, or at any of the attractive people who walked past him in the streets of Seoul. The title of ‘coolest guy in the Big Five’ was a legitimate thing within the rebellion, and Jackson was set on keeping his ‘hopeless romantic’ mentality on the down-low in order to retain it. The only two who were aware of this side of him were JB and BamBam, who didn’t completely agree with his outlook but let him be for the sake of avoiding the boy’s dramatic episodes, which usually consisted of Jackson whining incessantly and becoming unmanageably self-defensive. The moment happening later that night was something he had rehearsed countless times in his head whenever he couldn’t fall asleep at night (which he usually blamed on his soulmate being a restless little shit and cursed them for having a fucked up sleep schedule) and Jackson was so wound up over finally experiencing it to the point that he’d nearly thrown up after waking earlier that morning.

Getting up from the chair, Jackson swung open the door to his own room.

“I don’t get why you aren’t.”

 

-

 

It was a little past 8:55 at night when BamBam had slipped quietly through the bedroom window of their current target, followed immediately by JB, who seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.

“Looks like I won this time, JB-hyung,” the younger boy taunted, sliding across the bedroom floor and over to the two sleeping figures snoring away on the queen-sized bed. BamBam flashed him an innocent smile. “A new record for me, too. Two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

JB perched himself on the windowsill, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut in annoyance. His hand shot down to rub the painful spot on the small of his back, and he questioned for a moment why he ever decided to assume leadership of a team of buffoons. “It’s not a fair win with my back like this, you know.”

“Come on,” BamBam complained as he dug his hand into his ammunition belt, pulling out a tranquilizing dart and loading it into his gun. “Can’t you just let me win _once_ , hyung?” He tiptoed to the foot of the bed and slowly lifted a corner of the covers to reveal a pair of bare feet, inching his weapon closer to the man’s skin.

“Sorry, Kim Shidae-ssi,” whispered Jackson, who suddenly materialized from under the bed, pinning the man’s hands to his headboard and muffling his calls with a chloroform mask. “But It’d be best if you didn’t try to put up a fight.”

Flaunting his usual shit-eating grin, Jackson let out a high-pitched cackle. “Too bad, Bam.” He pushed the tip of his tranquilizer gun onto the side of Kim Shidae’s torso, pulling the trigger and releasing a bullet of the solution into the older man’s body. “One minute and fifty-nine seconds for me,” he continued, squealing with the same amount of excitement as someone who had just won the lottery.

“Are you impressed, JB-hyung?” Jackson wiggled an eyebrow at JB, who—as usual—remained stone-faced.

The leader hopped off the ledge and stepped over to the bed, heaving one of the unconscious man’s arms over his shoulder. He glanced quickly at his watch. “We don’t have time to play around. Let’s get going before we get caught.”

“Come _onnn_ ,” Jackson whined as he tugged on his leader’s sleeve, pulling Kim Shidae off JB’s shoulder and tossing him over his own with ease. He stepped onto the windowsill before stopping and muttering a humoured ‘ _I can’t believe his wife could sleep through all this noise without stirring even once_ ’ and shooting her in the side with a bullet of tranquilizer (just for good measure) and pulling himself up onto the roof. The sound of his voice was muffled through the drywall. “Seriously, what does a guy have to do to get some praise around here?”

Their leader swung himself up from the roof’s edge, landing beside Jackson and covering the boy’s mouth with his hand. “Shut up for a sec.” JB scanned the abandoned streets quickly before facing BamBam, who was clinging onto the shingles for dear life, his thin legs dangling in the air. Hoisting the youngest up next to him, he whispered, “I felt someone else’s presence nearby.”

“Are your spidey senses tingling again, hyung?” BamBam began, only to have JB’s other index finger pressed abruptly against his lips less than a second later.

“Shut up.”

A flash of red appeared in the distance, drawing the attention of all three boys and leading JB to squint his eyes at a pair of dark figures who had just darted behind a rundown apartment complex. He reached into his belt compartment, pulling out his distance lens and slipping them on. “Speaking of spiders,” JB mumbled, sporting a slight smirk as he zoomed in on the duo, who were decked out in charcoal bomber jackets and scurrying around below. “I think we just caught two of them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, I just dedicated like 5 of my paragraphs to HoeBam and his floppy-ass dick. Andd, the rest of em are about the Serpentrine guys being literal children. (and another Spiderman reference cuz you can never have too much Spiderman ^^)  
> Okay, so the juicy stuff isn't really happening yet but IT'S STARTING, I PROMISE. it's starting.


	5. The Boy in the Red Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so, the soulmates finally decide to show their faces. (four chapters too late, if i do say so myself)

**MARK**

“What the hell was that!?” Yugyeom wailed as he and Mark sped from the street corner and behind the nearest apartment building in sight, hoping to god that they hadn’t been spotted.

Mark pressed the back of his hand to Yugyeom’s lips once the two ducked beneath the canopy covering its entrance. He couldn’t exactly complain. Yugyeom had every right to be upset. It hadn’t even been fifteen minutes into his first mission with the Arachniad, and Mark had already fucked up. He’d left the house with the three other boys to find the Serpentrine, Junior splitting off shortly after because he wanted his first meeting with his soulmate to be special (Mark knew he just didn’t want him and the others to get in the way), and searched through a mass of abandoned residential areas just bordering the edges of Seoul before Youngjae finally spotted their targets. Just as predicted, Junior’s invention had worked perfectly.

Anyways, back to Mark’s fuck-up. Youngjae had been peacefully watching the Serpentrine from afar before separating from the two boys and scurrying further towards the group to try and get a better view of their barcodes, pulling his camera discreetly from his jacket pocket and facing it in their direction. Yugyeom had warned Mark in the nicest way possible to remain behind the building and stay out of sight, given that it was his first mission since his injury, but Mark was having none of it. He complied in the beginning, leaning back against the wall of the building and doing nothing that would give him away except peeking out occasionally, curious as to what his allies were up to. They’d given him a pair of his own uninvisibilizing glasses and one of the Arachniad’s signature colour-changing bomber jackets with his own name (which Junior had spent ten whole minutes lovingly stitching) in black lettering across the back. Officially, he was the faction’s newest member, but Mark felt something was missing. They hadn’t put him through any initiation rituals, taken him with them on any of their previous outings, or let him do much of anything really. He didn’t feel he had done enough to even _deserve_ his spot in the team, much less earn it. Mark felt as if he was just, well, _there_. In the past, he’d been exceptionally skilled at following directions to the point that others would commend him for it, getting “excellent at following instructions” and “a pleasure to have in class” comments at the top of his report cards back in elementary school and praise from his high school English teacher for being a great listener during class. So, Mark taking a deep breath and disobediently tiptoeing out from behind the building and over to Yugyeom was definitely something no one who knew him back in Seoul could have expected to happen.

Without the youngest noticing, Mark stood behind Yugyeom silently, edging his chin over the boy’s shoulder to get a better view at what he and Youngjae were making such a big deal out of. It _had_ to be something interesting. Three dark figures were perched on the rooftop of a house sitting near the wire gates that separated the city’s South District from the outskirts, donning expensive-looking jackets lined with what seemed like dragon scales and coloured militia-green, which Mark found ironic since they were supposedly the archenemies of the government. As expected, a fourth figure—which Mark guessed was their government target for the night—was swung over the shoulder of the shortest member of the group, who had his back turned to the other two and was waving his arms about expressively. The tallest one had just lifted a boy with gangly limbs up from the roof’s edge before glancing around slowly. Mark shrunk behind Yugyeom, using the larger boy as a shield and trying to avoid being spotted by the Serpentrine. He pressed his forearms against the boy’s back in a feeble attempt to hide as his eyes darted back to the three boys on the roof, only to see the tallest turn and stare out in their direction. Before he could come up with a reason why he was staring at them, Mark glanced down and saw that his sleeves had become an unusually bright shade of red. _Shit_. He quickly scrambled to press the colour-change button in his sleeve as Yugyeom flipped around in panic, taking hold of Mark’s sleeve and darting back behind the building he had warned him to hide behind.

“Oh my god,” Yugyeom whispered after the two had settled in their hiding spots, and Mark could see his lips trembling. “They were looking right at us. You’re gonna get us all killed, Mark-hyung.”

“It was an accident,” Mark said breathlessly, his voice dripping with guilt. “I swear.” Once again, Mark stepped cautiously towards the corner of the building in attempt to edge in one last glimpse of the Serpentrine.

“We’d better run, Yugyeom.”

“Why?” Yugyeom gulped, unsure if he actually wanted to hear the answer.

“Because they’re coming after us,” Mark choked out as he turned in the opposite direction, grabbing the front of Yugyeom’s jacket before breaking into a full sprint.

 

 

**JUNIOR**

Having paced around the rooftops in the Southwest District for twenty minutes now, Junior was growing anxious. The majority of houses on the block had been empty, as they typically were during Saturday nights, and he was debating whether or not he should stay up where he couldn’t be spotted, or pace around on the sidewalks instead because, as he had told himself countless times, _‘who the hell in their right mind would be searching for their soulmate on the rooftops?’_

After checking if his hair looked okay for the hundredth time in his compact mirror, and adjusting his jacket so the material didn’t bunch up at the shoulders like it usually did, Junior heard a wild frenzy of emergency signals go off in his pocket. He groaned as he reached in to see who had buzzed him minutes before such a critical moment was just about to take place.

_Choi Youngjae has sent a distress signal 1 kilometer away from your location._

_Choi Youngjae has sent a distress signal 1 kilometer away from your location._

_Choi Youngjae has sent a distress signal 1 kilometer away from your location._

_Kim Yugyeom has sent a distress signal 1 kilometer away from your location._

_Choi Youngjae has sent a distress signal 1 kilometer away from your location._

He took a quick glance at his countdown timer. 00:00:08:43. If he saved their asses fast enough, he _might_ have a slight chance of making it back on time. Squeezing his eyes shut and letting out a final sigh of annoyance, Junior began heading towards the direction his communicator had specified the boys were in.

“This had better be damn well worth it.”

 

 

**BAMBAM**

BamBam leapt from the rooftop, using his left foot to propel him from the wire fence and onto the ground on the other side. “Jackson-hyung,” he chattered enthusiastically as he continued to run full speed ahead. “Do you think it might be them?”

Jackson’s pace slowed after he was ungracefully hit in the face with one side of Kim Shidae’s buttocks when landing. “Oh!” His eyes widened as he checked the timer on his wrist, which now read 00:00:03:58. “You’re right. Only four more minutes or so before we get to see who they are,” he squealed in excitement, breaking into small skips as he ran.

After waiting for Jackson to catch up, BamBam glanced at his friend’s wrist then back at his own, smiling cheekily. “Two for me, remember? Mine’s two minutes faster than yours,” he chimed, darting back ahead of his teammates. “You guys can go as slow as you want and take it easy for now.”

JB winced in pain as he caught up to the other two, grabbing the back of BamBam’s collar and tugging him back. “Hey, if anyone needs to take it easy, it’s you,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. Their leader strolled leisurely in front of Jackson, BamBam in tow, before turning around to yell an impatient _‘hurry and catch up, will you’_ to him and ascending back onto the rooftops.

The youngest made out a strained ‘ _well if we carried this dude in shifts, maybe I could’_ coming from Jackson’s mouth as the older boy tossed their victim aside onto a sidewalk before tumbling onto the pavement and letting out a loud sigh of relief. Nudging their leader aside, BamBam regained his footing on the roof shingles and sped in front. Given that he was fairly nimble and had particularly long legs, sprints and elevated maneuvers were his specialty. Well, whenever they didn’t involve having to get _onto_ the rooftops, that is. BamBam spotted his targets running for their lives one block away and three stories below before turning back to a breathless JB. He grinned widely. “Hey, hey, JB-hyung. How about we drop in on them in a few minutes?”

Flashing the maknae a rare smile, JB nodded in agreement. “I don’t see why not.”

“Oh, right.” BamBam paused.

“First, does my hair look good?”

JB rolled his eyes for the millionth time that day. “It looks fine, BamBam.”

 

 

**MARK**

Youngjae ended up finding his two teammates with the help of Yugyeom’s squawking and by spotting the chase with his uninvisibilizing glasses, meeting up with the boys not too long after they had begun their escape.

“What the heck happened here!?” Their not-so-helpful, one-man rescue team shrieked over Yugyeom’s voice.

Mark shook his head without shooting the boy as much as a sideways glance. “I’ll tell you later. Did you ping Junior?” The team didn’t have any spare emergency communicators lying around for Mark to use, so he was as good as dead if he ever became separated from the others and got himself into real deep shit.

“Only like, a million times,” Youngjae wheezed.

Yugyeom alternated between panting and wailing as he continued to run in front of the other two at full speed. “I can _not_ be seen like this. I’m gonna meet my soulmate in _fifteen seconds_ for god’s sake and they’re gonna see me all sweaty and smelly and I’m probably gonna die soon after—who’s _brilliant_ idea was this!?”

Exchanging aggravated glances, Mark and Youngjae spoke at the same time. “Junior's,” they answered monotonously.

“Or,” Mark began, a hint of hope in his voice, “your soulmate might save us from the Serpentrine.”

Yugyeom’s face lit up. “Of course. It all makes sense now. That has to be it!” He slowed his pace to match his shorter-legged peers and rolled up his sleeve. “Now all we have to do is wait for this thing to reach zero,” he said in a voice too calm for Mark’s comfort. “Only five seconds left.”

“Four!” Youngjae read, decelerating into to a complete stop.

Mark held his breath. It may not have been the best idea to stop running right in the middle of a life-and-death chase between a team of superhero-wannabes and three psycho killers, but hey, meeting your soulmate _was_ a pretty important thing, after all. “Three.”

“Two,” Yugyeom squeaked in anticipation. He laced his fingers together tightly and took a peek at his wrist to see the numbers change for the last time they would for the rest of his life.

“One,” called a light, unfamiliar voice.

Two unfamiliar figures dropped down from a nearby rooftop, landing smoothly onto the pavement before slowly stepping out of the shadows, the dark, olive-green scales on their jackets shining in the darkness. It was the Serpentrine. Well, at least two-thirds of them, anyways. What Mark couldn’t believe most was the fact that he could _see_ the Serpentrine, no special glasses or anything needed, since he’d dropped his pair ages ago while he and the boys were getting tailed by them.

While willing himself to remain calm, Mark attempted to tag each of the two boys in front of him with a name. For now, there was BamBam—who he remembered Youngjae had nicknamed the ‘ _skinny one’_ —and the ‘ _medium one’_ , JB, who seemed slim and buff at the same time and Mark concluded from this that there was no other word to describe him simply than, well, _medium_. Something about JB’s broad shoulders, piercing gaze—as well as the array of actual piercings along his ears and the snakebites on his lips—and proud stance gave Mark a strong hunch that he was the leader of the three. Wearing slightly heeled boots, BamBam was just a little shorter than JB, but still had an aura that was just as intimidating. The boy sported black eyeliner along with a thin leather choker around his neck, and had the longest pair of legs Mark had ever seen. They were both exceptionally good-looking, to the point that it was somewhat unsettling.

He finally snapped out of his spur-of-the-moment analysis of the enemy faction when he felt Youngjae shaking his arm. “I think…there might be…something wrong with Yugyeom,” he whispered anxiously, gripping tightly on the end of the older boy’s sleeve, prompting his jacket to flash red for the second time that night. Mark groaned. Junior seriously needed to choose a better location for a colour-changing switch.

Mark’s gaze followed Youngjae’s finger, only to see Yugyeom with his eyes forced wide and his mouth hanging open. If he hadn’t known better, Mark would have been completely convinced that his teammate was possessed, but the maknae’s eyes had been tracing BamBam’s movements unfalteringly, looking so pathetically lovestruck that Mark couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. After all, his soulmate was a member of the _Serpentrine_ , aka the Faction of Pure Evil, and there was nothing he could do about it. Still, Mark wasn’t exactly surprised at all this. A part of him had already seen it coming. If he had been in Yugyeom’s shoes, this would have been the perfect time to fulfill his old promise with Iron.

Bambam inched his face closer to Yugyeom's then flashed a smile at JB. "So, hyung, what should we do with them now?"

"Nothing, for now. After all, Jackson wouldn't appreciate us doing anything without him, would he?" JB replied smoothly, dragging his eyes slowly from one boy to another as if daring them to move.

The pair of Serpentrine boys had been circling the three for a while now, watching intently and snickering occasionally at their distress. It looked like they were waiting for their third member to appear, and Mark wasn’t planning to stick around long enough for him to show up. Shaking the youngest boy’s arm as violently as Youngjae had with his, Mark fidgeted nervously. “Come on. Snap out of it, Yugyeom,” he murmured, eyes darting around for any sign of Junior coming by with reinforcements or something of the sort, even though he knew their faction had only four members in it. It had been a while since Youngjae had last pinged Junior with his communicator, and it looked like their almighty leader slash novice engineer had ignored their distress signals and abandoned the three for the sake of meeting the stupid, precious love of his life. At least Junior had better luck. He was miles away somewhere in Seoul, probably flirting up someone with decently upright morals who didn’t kill people for a living and being just as big of a sap as Yugyeom was.

“Did I miss anything?”

Mark heard a raspy voice tinged with both breathlessness and just the right amount of arrogance echo from above. He glanced up to see a male figure perched upon a low rooftop, who had enough audacity to block a beautiful view of the full moon with his silhouette. When the rays of moonlight bounced off the strands in the boy’s tangle of platinum hair and illuminated his features, Mark’s eyes widened.

 

 

**JACKSON**

Jackson had done everything he could in the past minute to prepare himself for meeting his destined someone—he’d combed his hair (with his fingers, of course, since he had forgotten his comb at the apartment), flossed and taken a mint before he left his room, and worn his insoles. He had enthusiastically counted down the seconds on his timer out loud, played every love song he could remember in his head during the last four minutes he had, and chattered away to an unconscious Kim Shidae about how excited he was to finally see his soulmate while he got back onto his feet to head in his teammates’ direction. He had done everything he could to ready himself, but not a moment after he had called out to his faction members, Jackson felt helplessly frozen in place.

A boy in a red jacket was standing meters below him on the other side of the street, clutching the jacket of some other guy who had been staring lovingly at BamBam. There were two others beside him, of course, but the boy in red was all Jackson saw. Their eyes interlocked the second Jackson finished his sentence, resulting in what seemed like an eternity of endless gazing between the two pairs of dark brown eyes. The boy stared up silently at Jackson, his crop of bright blond hair shining amid the darkness of the night and his full lips parting beautifully in surprise. This was undoubtedly the most gorgeous person Jackson had ever seen, and for once, he wasn’t bluffing. He had brilliantly-architectured features, with plush pink lips and captivatingly familiar eyes that seemed to swallow him in. It had only been a few minutes, yet Jackson could imagine a lifetime together with this boy—this boy whose name he didn’t even know, but wanted to so, _so_ badly. Jackson didn’t have a single doubt in his mind that this person was his soulmate.

Sliding off the roof with ease and landing beside his faction members, Jackson found himself continuing to admire him. With the way he looked, it was really hard not to. Jackson was sure JB and BamBam were judging him hard by now, but none of that mattered. “Wow,” he found himself murmuring, stepping eagerly towards the boy in the red jacket, his hand reaching towards his face. His soulmate was the exact same height as him, and Jackson thanked the heavens for reminding him to slip on his insoles before he left the apartment that day. The boy took an uneasy step backward, his expression suddenly transforming from dreaminess into a look of angered perplexity. His brows were furrowed and he raised an arm defensively as if he were about to punch the living daylights out of Jackson, who could feel his heart drop a little lower in his chest.

A person wearing a charcoal bomber which matched the three boys standing in front of him suddenly dashed into view from an alleyway, the sides of his face coated with a shining layer of sweat. The boy had jet black hair that stuck to his forehead from perspiration, and raced over to join his allies before stopping dead in his tracks as his eyes skimmed over the members of the Serpentrine. Despite the fact that he and BamBam had agreed that JB was the most attractive of the three, this boy was staring at JB a while longer than people normally did. He forced his eyes away from JB after a few seconds, which Jackson thought was praiseworthy, and pulled two dark pods out from his pockets.

“Mark! Yugyeom! Youngjae! Get out of here!” the black-haired boy yelled at the top of his lungs, voice cracking at the end of his sentence. Pulling the safety pins out of the pods and tossing them in Jackson’s direction, he ducked in front of them and pushed his factionmates out of the way. “For the last time: get out of here, _now_!”

White smoke billowed from the two pods, clouding the air around him and his teammates but not being opaque enough to give the four a decent chance to escape successfully without being caught in two seconds. Jackson was just about to follow the silhouettes through the smoke before a hand reached out from behind to take a secure hold of his arm.

“Jackson, don’t,” he heard JB say firmly, the grip on his bicep tightening. “We’ll let them go for now. They’re a faction full of nobodies. They can’t run away from us forever.” Although he was tempted to follow the sound of pattering of footsteps down the sidewalk ahead, Jackson obeyed.

Once the smoke finally cleared, the four boys had long disappeared.

“So, I guess it’s kinda like a game of hide-and-go-seek,” BamBam commented, stepping toward them through the leftover smoke.

Jackson shot his members a wide smirk. “This’ll be fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAYYY THEY'VE ALL MET EACH OTHER NOW. (finally)  
> Sorry, there are a LOT of sappy soulmate descriptions from Jackson and just a whole lot of sap in general. Major props to mommy Jinyoung for being 100% done with his kids and still saving their asses in the end, haha c;


	6. Barcodes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't you just love the sweet scent of denial and emotional turmoil in the morning? (ft. Mark Tuan being a snoop)

“So,” Mark began. He let a small smirk form on his lips once the other three had shoved themselves through the doorway to their apartment. “Did you find out which one of you has the cuter soulmate?”

The only response he received was a low grumble from Junior’s throat and a quiet _“I do”_ from Yugyeom, who sighed dreamily before collapsing on a chair in the kitchen. Ever since the events with the Serpentrine that night, Junior had been forming excuse after excuse as to why his soulmate absolutely, positively _could not_ be someone from such a horrible faction, and that he’d probably passed right by his actual soulmate while he was running over to save his housemates’ asses. After this, he then began claiming this was _their_ fault for pinging him nonstop and dragging him over there in the first place, while Youngjae had to try to convince Junior—the smartest one of the four—that this was all predestined and it was absolutely, positively _not_ a mistake. It took fifteen whole minutes of back-and-forth arguing before Junior dejectedly came to terms with the fact that yes, his soulmate was, indeed, one of their archenemies and that there was nothing else he could do about it. This was the first time the boys had ever seen their leader so shaken, and apparently, Youngjae and Mark were the only ones who found it hilarious.

Yugyeom didn’t seem upset in the slightest, skipping down sidewalks on the way back to their apartment complex and humming the tune of some annoyingly upbeat pop song from that American radio station he would always listen to whenever he was on his computer, which Mark later identified as _Ayo_ by Chris Brown. It turned out that the youngest didn’t give two shits about where his soulmate fell on the alignment scale (Youngjae and Mark had both agreed that all three members of the Serpentine should be classified as Chaotic Evil), and cared even less about his leader’s current emotional state.

“Come _on_ , hyung. It’s really not that big of a deal,” Yugyeom said simply, resting his head on the table. Tensing up for a second, Mark waited for Junior to snap.

He did.

“No,” Junior replied, stopping halfway through his journey to his bedroom, which everyone knew he’d be holing himself in for the next day or so, to face Yugyeom. “It really _is_.” Mark still wasn’t sure whether Junior and Yugyeom fought more like siblings or an old married couple well into their nineties. Their leader’s tone was harsher than usual, his voice growling at the base of his throat like the engine of some sort of busted up truck, making Mark divert his gaze to his lap in case Junior wanted somebody else to lash out at. His eyes wandered to the black band on his left wrist, which was patched with dirt and cement dust. In the midst of sweeping his fingers across it, he stopped. Something felt strange.

Chair legs squeaked against the tiled floor in the kitchen, and he could hear Yugyeom draw a shaky breath before speaking. “I don’t understand you, hyung. You should be _glad_.” He heard the thud of Yugyeom’s palms against the table. “You should be glad you got to meet your soulmate at all. You should be glad your countdown timer didn’t turn grey when you were sixteen like my brother’s did and glad that your soulmate isn’t—” He paused. “That your soulmate isn’t _dead_.” Mark’s eyes flickered up from his wristband to Yugyeom. The boy’s eyes were downcast, his bangs covering the tears that Mark knew were leaking from his face. He knew all about grey timers. Mark had experienced it second-hand, which in his opinion, hurt way more than feeling it directly. It was heart wrenchingly vivid, the memory of his older sister shuffling into his room in the middle of the night and crying silently into his shoulder just two days after his twelfth birthday. So like Yugyeom, Mark knew the feeling all too well.

Their leader dropped his hands to his sides, and his voice wavered the same way it did before someone was about to cry. “I wish they were.” His fingers trembled as he curled them into fists. A much-needed minute of silence hung through the air in the apartment before Yugyeom inhaled deeply and sank back into his seat while Junior stepped slowly toward his bedroom, pressing a hand against the door. Youngjae crept cautiously over to Junior with what looked like an undercover camera (according to Mark’s extensive knowledge of espionage films) clutched tightly in his hand, stopping after he entered the hallway.

“I know this isn’t the best time, Jinyoung-hyung, but—”

Junior cut him off, giving his housemate one last irritated grunt before disappearing into his room, slamming the door loudly behind him. It was a little out of character for Junior to brush off Youngjae, who was the only one in this apartment that Junior genuinely had a soft spot for, but Mark wasn’t too surprised at it. He didn’t want to admit it, but if he were in the same situation as Junior right now, Mark knew he would be acting the exact same way. If his soulmate had turned out to be from the Serpentrine, he wouldn’t know what to do. He turned to Youngjae, who looked slightly distraught after being ignored by Junior, and patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he started quietly, pulling Youngjae over and seating him down on the couch. “What did you want to show him? I’ll take a look at it, if you want.”

After seeing Youngjae’s face immediately brighten, Mark felt a tad prouder of himself. “Well,” he said excitedly, connecting his camera to the USB port on his cell phone, “while all of you were getting distracted by the Serpentrine guys I got some pretty sweet shots of their barcodes.” Youngjae rotated his camera to give Mark, who was evidently brimming with curiosity, a better look. Catching a glimpse of a sleeping Yugyeom snoring away in the corner of his eye, Youngjae leaned in closer and brought his voice down to a whisper. “Junior gave me and Yugyeom actual cameras to use last year, but they weren’t exactly discreet enough to use on missions. So I ended up researching how to make one of these online, and it took literally _forever_ to find all the components and even longer before I figured out how to assemble them, but it turned out okay. I got it up and running before we headed out tonight and I still can’t believe it actually _worked_.”

Youngjae paused for a minute, making Mark raise his head. Youngjae had a smile on his face, as usual, but this time he could see it was tinged with the slightest bit of sadness. Mark bumped him gently in the knee, urging him to get what was bothering him off his chest. The younger boy glanced up at Mark, then drew his eyes back down to his cell phone.

“You know, Mark-hyung. Sometimes I just feel, I don’t know, _irrelevant,_ ” his friend began quietly, fingers fiddling with a couple of loose seams from his jeans. “Like how members from other factions all know about Junior and Yugyeom while I’m just, well, the guy who delivers groceries to the apartment.”

Mark placed a hesitant hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Youngjae. You’re important in the group, and you don’t have to keep fighting to prove it. After all, you were the one who signaled Junior and kept us grounded while the Serpentrine were right in front of us. We _need_ you here.”

Youngjae broke into a shy smile, mouthing a silent “thank you, Mark-hyung” at the older boy. This was probably the most Mark had ever spoken during his entire stay with the boys, but he felt like it needed to be said. Out of all the boys he had trained and gone on missions with in the past month, Youngjae was the one who showed the most determination and willpower, and was always motivated in keeping the Arachniad harmonious. Although the two other members never mentioned it aloud, Mark knew they all thought the same thing. He smiled as he passed Youngjae’s camera back to its owner.

“Anyway, let’s take a look at your pictures.”

When Youngjae pressed the image folder on his phone, “whoa” was all Mark could respond with. The screen was lined with rows of pictures, each one displaying a barcode printed on someone’s skin. With all the running for their lives they’d been doing that night, he was surprised (and thankful) that Youngjae remembered what the purpose of their mission was. Mark had tried his hardest to stay on task, but getting chased by a band of psycho killers halfway through didn’t exactly help his situation. Even if all of this _was_ his fault, they couldn’t ignore the fact that he busted his ass for them out there. What confused him the most was the reason why the Serpentrine had their barcodes exposed. In the few minutes he had been examining the three, Mark saw that BamBam’s was located on the side of his neck, JB’s on the back of his left hand, and Jackson’s on his right bicep. Mark’s barcode was printed on the upper-right side of his chest, and because of this, he usually avoided wearing tank tops or low V-necks whenever he went out on missions to prevent others from scanning it and obtaining his personal information.

Swiping his finger across the screen, Mark quickly flipped through the camera gallery and zoomed in on each photo. Most of the pictures were blurry, and Mark could tell that Youngjae had been dead set on taking them despite the fact that he had been shivering wildly—either from the cold or out of fear that he’d be killed by the Serpentrine. Out of all the fifty-or-so snapshots Youngjae had taken, a handful were clear enough for him to make out each individual band of ink in the barcodes. If he were in Youngjae’s shoes, Mark knew he couldn’t have been able to carry it out any better. “This is amazing, Youngjae. Seriously,” he finally said while nudging the younger boy, who was squirming with modesty beside him, and contorted his expression after remembering Youngjae’s prior comment. “But come on. I wasn’t _distracted_.”

Youngjae raised a knowing eyebrow. “If you say so,” he said, laughing and nudging Mark back in the arm twice as hard.

 

-

 

That night, just like all the other nights he’d spent at the apartment, Mark couldn’t fall asleep. At least, not for more than forty minutes at a time, anyway. After ushering an unconscious Yugyeom back to his own bed, he and Youngjae had agreed to hit the sack at 12am, and yet, here he was—still tossing and turning on the couch at three in the morning. He’d woken up at least thrice that night, each time jolting awake from a nightmare that was instantly forgotten and with his forehead covered in cold sweat. Something felt different. _Off._ He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

He had too many questions, too much information he needed to know (or rather, was too curious about to keep being kept in the dark), and an apartment filled with answers, if he managed to do his research right.

Kicking off his covers, Mark swung his legs off the side of the couch and strode slowly through the darkness and across the room, making sure to step quietly and carefully so he didn’t wake the others. Feeling the edge of the kitchen table bump against his thigh, he ran his fingers across the countertop only to collide with a chilled, half-finished bottle of soju (it didn’t take a genius to figure out who’d been sneaking into the kitchen to fix their post-meeting-their-soulmate sorrows by taking a few swigs straight out of the bottle) and a crusty, used tissue (Mark definitely didn’t want to know who was behind _that_ ). He moved his hand closer to the corner of the counter until he felt the aluminum from Youngjae’s camera, still attached to his cell phone, brush against his fingertips. _Gotcha_.

Mark clicked open the door to Junior’s room and stepped in, creeping over to his desk to retrieve his laptop. With Junior being the second heaviest sleeper of the four (the first being Mark), walking into his room completely unnoticed was practically the easiest feat in the world.

After returning to the couch, he flipped open Junior’s laptop almost robotically, then opened on Youngjae’s phone the file folder that contained all the photos from that night. As expected, the younger boy had already organized the pictures according to each Serpentrine member. There were fifteen photos of JB’s barcode, thirty of BamBam’s (Mark could recall the boy not being able to stay still for more than two goddamn seconds at a time), and only six of Jackson’s, which Mark found odd. After all, Junior had told them before they headed out to keep an eye out specifically for Jackson, emphasizing the fact that the guy was the team’s main fighter and the most unpredictable of them all. Mark fought his temptation to skip to Jackson’s photos first and enlarged the clearest of JB’s photos. His fingers fumbled underneath the couch and pulled out the silver flashlight that he usually kept for the sake of convenience (because, hey, you never know when you’ll need to take an emergency bathroom break in the middle of the night). Clicking the light on, Mark shone it over the picture and opened the barcode scanner on the laptop. He watched nervously as a stripe of red light flashed over the phone, shifting slowly from the top of the barcode to the bottom.

The words _scan successful_ appeared in the center of the monitor in small red font while an image of JB, accompanied with a block of text below it, flashed across the left side of the laptop screen. Mark leaned in closer, squinting at the words through the sudden flood of brightness.

 

_Legal Name: Im Jaebum_

_Current Status: Unknown_

_Tracking Device Status: Inactive     Current Location: Unknown_

 

His eyes quickly scanned over things such as his birthdate, blood type, height, eye colour and all the other irrelevant details used for identification, settling on JB’s personal history.

According to the government’s records, JB took part of his father’s record label by becoming a musical composer and lyricist for a variety of hip hop and RnB artists from Seoul, while also producing his own songs. He’d begun his acting career at the age of seventeen as the main lead of a sixteen-episode South Korean drama. JB previously resided in Seoul’s Southeast District. _So, from Gangnam_ , Mark thought. So in other words, the guy was incredibly rich and famous. _Was_. Mark was about to question why anyone would want to give up a life like that to live in the _outskirts_ of all places, but realized that it would be hypocritical. After all, he himself had left his own fairly well-off family and his so-called (quote) perfect (unquote) life to join the rebellion a month ago.

Mark decided he’d had enough of JB for now and moved onto BamBam.

 

_Legal Name: Kunpimook Bhuwakul_

Mark, who had earlier questioned the naming skills of the enemys' parents, was relieved to know that ‘BamBam’ wasn’t the boy’s actual name.

_Current Status: Unknown_

_Tracking Device Status: Inactive     Current Location: Unknown_

 

With his eyes drawn immediately to the _Height: 170cm_ on the screen, Mark muffled his laughter. Just how long ago did the government conduct this? Unless the boy had been wearing heels when they met, BamBam was definitely _not_ 170 centimeters tall, given how he’d been looming over both him and Youngjae earlier that night.

BamBam was raised in the Southeast District ( _another boy from Gangnam_ ), and grew up acting in various roles for commercials since the age of six, starring in a handful of variety shows in both Thailand and Korea. Mark frowned. This one probably had a bunch of relatives in high places, too. Apparently, he’d begun training to become an idol at the age of twelve, debuted at sixteen, and was active for exactly one year before leaving the industry and his family to join the rebellion. His uncle was currently the CEO of one of Korea’s most nationally renowned entertainment companies. Mark laughed. Figures.

He closed the page and opened a picture of Jackson’s barcode. Hopefully, this one didn’t have his entire life handed to him. Mark was starting to get tired of reading about evil, spoiled rich kids who were born with silver spoons in their mouths and grew up living in the lap of luxury.

Jackson’s ID photograph instantly caught Mark’s attention the minute it popped up onscreen. Half-expecting the boy to show up in his whole platinum-blond glory, he was surprised to see him with a crop of short, black hair on his head while wearing a sour expression. Both his appearance and his demeanor seemed completely different, and for a moment, Mark was questioning whether they were the same person. He began to look at the text below, slowly this time, unconsciously reading over stupid things like his date of birth and his blood type.

 

_Legal Name: Jackson Wang             Aliases: Wang Jia Er, Wang Ka Yee_

_Current Status: Deceased_

_Tracking Device Status: Inactive     Current Location: Unknown_

 

 _Wait a minute._ Deceased? Unless he had seen his ghost that night, Mark was pretty sure Jackson Wang was very alive. _Must be a mistake_ , Mark thought, ignoring the line of text and continuing to read on.

From the section on his personal history, Mark learned that Jackson had been a nationally-recognized fencing champion for Hong Kong before he moved to Seoul to train for the international fencing championships. He had won several international competitions, earning him offers and fencing scholarships from universities in Hong Kong, Seoul, and from Stanford University, which made Mark the tiniest bit envious. Back in America, he’d been aiming for Stanford the minute he knew what Stanford was, and here was this guy, who’d probably never even _heard_ of the school, getting offered a full _scholarship_ from them and then turning it down to go to Seoul. And considering that he ended up joining the rebellion not too long after starting university, Mark concluded that Jackson was probably pretty shit at picking schools. Like JB and BamBam, Jackson was also from the Southeast District. Just like Junior had predicted before, each one of these guys had been totally living it up before. But, he supposed rich kids needed to leave the nest to find themselves too. Maybe all that fame ended up screwing up their brains for good and wrecking them up emotionally, which was why they turned out this way. Mark didn’t really know their stories, or any of the guys personally, but what he did know was that none of their fucked up history could excuse what they’d been doing to the government members.

Letting out a yawn just as sunlight began peeking through the curtains, Mark took one last glance at Jackson’s ID picture before shutting off Junior’s laptop and sliding it under the couch. The strange feeling in his gut from when he’d woken up returned, causing him to clutch at his stomach as he pulled his covers over his shoulders. Something about Jackson didn’t sit right with him. He seemed oddly familiar, and Mark felt as if he’d seen him before, but had no idea when or where. _But I_ couldn’t _have seen him before_ , Mark told himself. If he had, Mark was sure he’d at least remember his face. After all, it wasn’t one that could be so easily forgotten.

Once he finally managed to fall back asleep, Mark had a dream about Jackson Wang. He dreamt about meeting Jackson Wang, staring into the boy's eyes, and watching his own countdown timer slowly tick its way down to zero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone except Choi Youngjae: thought they were getting shit done but actually accomplished nothing.  
> Choi Youngjae: the only one who actually got shit done. (please protect this boy at all costs)
> 
> This one ended up longer than usual again... OTL buuut, due to Mark being a nosy little shit, we get some background info on the mysterious trio (oohh spooky), and some more denial. Don't worry though, there'll be even more denial in future chapters kekeke just you wait c;


End file.
